Urs Fischer
Foamcore, 2017
Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, acrylic paint, and oil medium, 96 × 120 inches (243.8 × 304.8 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman
Urs Fischer
aceofpigs, 2016
Aluminum, epoxy, steel, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 59 × 59 ¾ inches (149.9 × 151.8 cm), edition of 2 + 1 AP
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Rob McKeever
Urs Fischer
Low Lying Cloud, 2016
Cast bronze, acrylic primer, chalk gesso, rabbit skin glue, and oil paint, 8 ¼ × 15 ¼ × 7 ½ inches (21 × 38.7 × 19.1 cm), edition of 2
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman
Urs Fischer
Landscape, 2016
Aluminum panel, epoxy, reinforced polyurethane foam, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 71 × 127 ⅜ inches (180.3 × 323.5 cm)
© Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer
Oxygen, 2015
Aluminum panel, aramid honeycomb, two-component polyurethane adhesive, two-component epoxy primer, galvanized steel rivet nuts, acrylic primer, gesso, acrylic ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, and acrylic paint, 132 ½ × 106 inches (336.6 × 269.2 cm)
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Mats Nordman
Urs Fischer
last supper, 2014
Cast bronze, 60 × 60 × 300 inches (152.4 × 152.4 × 762 cm), edition of 2
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Melissa Christy
Urs Fischer
mermaid, 2014
Cast bronze, 40 ½ × 48 × 84 inches (102.9 × 121.9 × 213.4 cm), edition of 2
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Melissa Christy
Urs Fischer
Horse/Bed, 2013
Milled aluminum, galvanized steel, screws, bolts, and two-component resin, 85 ⅞ × 103 ⅝ × 43 ¾ inches (218.2 × 263.1 × 111.1 cm), edition of 3
© Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer
quarteredukulele, 2011
Top: ultralight MDF, acrylic sealer, wallpaper primer, wallpaper adhesive, paper, silk-screened acrylic paints, acrylic polymer emulsion, acrylic polyurethane, and urethane; base: cold-rolled steel powder-coated with polyester TGIC (RAL 6034), polyester tape, cork composite, and hardware; 34 ½ × 34 ½ × 24 ¾ inches (87.6 × 87.6 × 62.9 cm)
© Urs Fischer/Gavin Brown Enterprise
Urs Fischer
quarteredukulele, 2011
Top: ultralight MDF, acrylic sealer, wallpaper primer, wallpaper adhesive, paper, silk-screened acrylic paints, acrylic polymer emulsion, acrylic polyurethane, and urethane; base: cold-rolled steel powder-coated with polyester TGIC (RAL 6034), polyester tape, cork composite, and hardware; 34 ½ × 34 ½ × 24 ¾ inches (87.6 × 87.6 × 62.9 cm)
© Urs Fischer/Gavin Brown Enterprise
Urs Fischer, Bad Timing, Lamb Chop!, 2004–05
Cast aluminum, polyurethane resin, and enamel paint, 177 ⅛ × 90 ½ × 129 ⅞ inches (450 × 230 × 330 cm), edition of 2
© Urs Fischer. Photo: Erich Koyama
People seem to fear art. Art has always been a word for this thing that can’t be rationalized; when you see or hear something that you struggle to explain. But that’s its strength, of course, that’s what the word “art” is for.
—Urs Fischer
Urs Fischer mines the potential of materials—from clay, steel, and paint to bread, dirt, and produce—to create works that disorient and bewilder. Through scale distortions, illusion, and the juxtaposition of common objects, his sculptures, paintings, photographs, and large-scale installations explore themes of perception and representation while maintaining a witty irreverence and mordant humor.
Born in 1973, Fischer began his artistic career studying photography at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich. He later lived in London and Los Angeles, and shared a studio with Rudolf Stingel in both Berlin and New York. Themes of absence and presence, as well as the processes of art production, pervade his work, in which Fischer makes use of tables, chairs, shadows, and light to explore distortion and anthropomorphism. In Stuhl mit (1995–2001), bulbous, fabric-covered legs merge with a wooden chair, and in Studies for chairs for individual seating positions (1993), the absence of a human body is suggested by a sawdust and rubber mold draped over the furniture.
Gagosian and Sadie Coles HQ hosted a conversation between Urs Fischer and film curator and writer Róisín Tapponi about fearless creativity and the artist’s most recent monograph, Urs Fischer: Monumental Sculpture.
In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.
The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.
Urs Fischer sits down with his friend the author and artist Eric Sanders to address the perfect viewer, the effects of marketing, and the limits of human understanding.
The exhibition Urs Fischer: Lovers at Museo Jumex, Mexico City, brings together works from international public and private collections as well as from the artist’s own archive, alongside new pieces made especially for the exhibition. To mark this momentous twenty-year survey, the artist sits down with the exhibition’s curator, Francesco Bonami, to discuss the installation.
On the eve of Awol Erizku’s exhibition in New York, he and Urs Fischer discuss what it means to be an image maker, the beauty of blurring genres, the fetishization of authorship, and their shared love for Los Angeles.
William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
Catalyzed by the exhibition Crushed, Cast, Constructed: Sculpture by John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer, and Charles Ray, Alice Godwin examines the legacy and development of a Surrealist ethos in selected works from three contemporary sculptors.
In his introduction to the catalogue for Urs Fischer’s exhibition The Lyrical and the Prosaic, at the Aïshti Foundation in Beirut, curator Massimiliano Gioni traces the material and conceptual tensions that reverberate throughout the artist’s paintings, sculptures, installations, and interventions.
Fruit and vegetables are a recurring motif in Urs Fischer’s visual vocabulary, introducing the dimension of time while elaborating on the art historical tradition of the vanitas. Here, curator Francesco Bonami traces this thread through the artist’s sculptures and paintings of the past two decades.
Urs Fischer talks about reading during the pandemic lockdown, sharing five books—both fiction and nonfiction—that he has turned to while in self-isolation.
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